 |
September 21, 2007 |
|
 |
|
|
The Stranger
FOUND by Terry
in Nice, France
I discovered this photo inside a 1974 folio edition of "The Stranger" by Albert Camus, bought for 50 centimes at a used book store. The quality is the same as photos I took and developed in my home darkroom when I was in high school. I hope the person will recognize himself and write to explain what he's doing inside one of Camus' novels in Nice in 2006. I'm imagining him as one of the bohemian American youth who floated aimlessly around Europe in the late 1960s. He is obviously an intellectual. I think the photo was left with his French girlfriend as a souvenir of warm summer evenings on the Cote d'Azur speaking the language of love.
Sign in or register to start a profile and keep track of your comments. You may also post without creating a profile, but you'll have to answer some tough spam protection questions.
Forever May 30, 2006 |
Have Your Paint... March 17, 2007 |
The Not Rotten Thing October 16, 2005 |
Saturn Devours Youth February 25, 2006 |
 |
|
 |
         |
We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework,
to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles -
anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes...
» We're hopping on a plane and jetting to Europe for our Fall 2008 Euro Tour!
» Join Peter Rothbart for his mini-tour of the Pacific Northwest
I get that at one point in time these glasses were necessary, but now, whenever I see someone wearing these glasses, I know I don't want to be friends with them. People who wear these glasses seem to be more impressed by themselves than I am. Ugh.
lol, Looks like my Dad when he was younger
The creepiness factor is off the chart for me on this one. There's something about the way his left eye is staring down at me that makes me irritably uncomfortable.
It's him... The Stranger!!
The Finder is correct - he is "obviously an intellectual" and an arrogant one, too, because he's looking down on all of us.
This person looks to me that he could never speak the language of love. He is just to plain creepy.
Thank you so much for including the circumstances behind this find.
Its so much more fun knowing you found it in a Camus novel. Just imagine if this was found in a copy of the Hobbit, or stuck in the pages of a Danielle Steele novel.
Maybe its just me, but that totally changes the find.
YUCK! I hate 'up the nostril' photos!
the finder is wrong. this is a guy who just couldn't work his camera.
"obviously an intellectual" my ass.
Ewww. I also totally disagree with the finder on this one. This says to me "Child Molester" loud and clear!
This guy is creeeeeeeeeepy!
Hmmm... not creepy, just a nerdy person (possibly a French one at that) playing with his camera?
If he's an American bohemian, he obviously only *thinks* he's an intellectual. Reminds me of that book 'Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs' about an American who finds himself working in a crazy bookstore in Paris (mostly full of crazy Americans and other non-French people who think they are intellectuals). Certainly does NOT remind me of Henry Miller, who was the real thing.
"HI!"
he looks like a young chuck close- if around now would hang out in coffee shops, actually know who henry miller was, and work for bestbuy.
i agree wholly with the Finder. Wonderfully amusing story and find.
My first thought was of those funny glasses with attached nose and mustache (oops 'stash is missing!) Or even those crazy glasses where the lenses make your eyes look weird. (I don't know how to describe them but you know what I mean.) Great Find, Terry!
Aaaaa!The eyes are weirding me out.And the nostrils.
I'm w/Jello - CREEEEEEPY.
And what makes you think he's "obviously and intellectual? ! ? ! "
He could have just had to read the book for a class and then stuck his 'nostril shot' inside before selling it to a used bookstore to get cash.
I think you're grasping at straws to say he's an "intellectual."
Wouldn't an "intellectual" KEEP the book, to read over and over again, pontificate on and discuss over wine and humus?
I'm just saying.....
what's a centime?
that is a lot of unnecessary assuming... it was probably some idiot playing with a camera. doubtful he even has a girlfriend. "intellectual"... HA!
Suzy Q, where I come from, those are referred to as "Birth Control Glasses".
I like the find, and I'm perfectly okay with the Finder saying he's "obviously an intellectual", whether it was tongue in cheek, OR meant to be taken seriously.
I think his French Girlfriend (the one he left the book and the pic with) was the photographer.
I don't think he looks like an intellectual, either. How do people 'look intellectual'? or look like a child molester, for that matter.
I think he took this pic of himself, it just looks like one of those to me.
Thanks, finder, for putting in the info about the book.
Clovvvvvvvvvvvvvvvver....... you're still my hero.
He was more likely giving himself "A Stranger". He used his other hand to snap this photo to commemorate the event.
I am hopeful that he did not travel around Europe placing various photos of himself in books during the 60s as a bohemian art project or something. Perhaps there are other pieces to this collection, and perhaps they are more creepy.
I don't know. This creepy-guy-looking-down-on-you shot makes me feel like this was the last thing some poor woman ever saw. And photographed.
No girlfriend would take a nostril picture.
So, is this Gene Ween or Dean Ween?
that is my photo!
I like him!
That asshole needs a haircut.
Those glasses in 1960...RAD, Those glasses in 2007...CREEPY. 'Nuff said.
hmmm, don't get the intellectual part, unless that was sarcasm.
I think it's a self photo by a guy who has been smoking weed. Look at his weird eyes.
I can almost see his nosehair. What is a centimes? Anyone know?
he's serious. the french don't know dry humor
Gypsy -- We have the same thought. I have been much bemused by Chuck Close's Big Self Portrait.
http://www.artsconnected.org/artsnetmn/identit
Hot Nostrils!
Turbo is funny.
I'm sad that so many people think this looks creepy, because it bears a frightening resemblance to my own face. I, too, wear glasses, though they are admittedly not quite as thick-rimmed.
I hope for the sake of all guys deemed creepy in this world (myself included) that he really did have a beautiful French girlfriend.
It's the lazy eye that is creeping me out.
oh no! i don't think he's creepy. there's something very sad about the picture. i think that either he or whoever he gave the picture to got very nostalgic every time they looked at the picture and then --
okay, i've got it. this is what happened.
he was hanging out with lola (we're just going to call her that, whoever she is. lola.) and lola had a camera that she was teasing him with. he hates having pictures of himself taken. and she'd gotten only pictures of his hands covering his face until she was laughing on her back and he was leaning over to take the camera away, and she got this ONE picture of his face.
then he either a) died, or b) moved away and lost contact with her somehow. she developed the pictures much, much later, and got so sad when she saw this one, because it was just such a fun moment for her, and now she can't repeat it ever again.
she couldn't destroy the picture, but she couldn't keep it any more. so, in order to keep herself from getting sad, she left the picture in a copy of "the stranger," because that's what he is now: a stranger.
awwww...
Maybe he was taking a pic of his deviated septum, for an insurance claim against his girlfriend who beat him up because of his nerdy glasses.
He's hot, I want to be his french girlfriend.
For the record, for those of you who don't know, a centime is a fraction of the former French Franc before France converted their currency to Euros. My family lives in France, and the last time I was there when there were Francs... 50 centimes were half of a Franc (kind of like 50 cents is half of a dollar), and it was about 4-5 Francs to a dollar...
it's not difficult to come to that conclusion without knowing a thing about french currency, MJ
Alice, that's the cutest story ever! It reminds me of a framed picture I bought at a garage sale with a letter to an ex on the back. Sad.
Aw, c'mon. Go easy on the guy. Everyone looks dorky/creepy in glasses in old pictures. That is the nature of glasses. I still have a pair that I wore in the 80s. At the time, they were the shit--large, squarish with a tortoise shell rim. Now, I cringe at them and would burn any picture with me wearing them. So, maybe the only thing wrong with this guy is that he didnt tear up his picture when he had a chance. He is probably alive today and wearing very sensible non-child-molesting Featherweight-lense, virtually-there-rimmed glasses that we know and accept today....until they look nerdy to the next generation...
He has a deviated sceptum and a deviated gaze. I think he took this picture just before he hid the bodies of his victims.
Wow.. yeah he looks like my brother-in-law, glasses and all. I don't think they make him look dorky. They make him look like a ponce.
geeeeez! the face is uuuber creepy.
he looks like one of those unknown pedophiles before he corners a poor child and haves his way with them.
You know, if we quit judging people on their appearance, we'd all be better off. As a person who works in the field of treating psychopaths and sexual deviants, i know that pedophiles seldom look like what they are. A lot of the time, they look like your scout leader, or the nice guy who offers to look after your kids while you run to the store, or the man you marry, who gets along with your kids so well. those are the guys to be afraid of, not the ones that your kids run screaming from.
"It puts the lotion on the skin or else it gets the hose again."
My favorite book of all time!
Great find!
Good one Courtney- for those of you not in the know, A "Stranger" is the act of sitting on one's hand for 20 minutes to make it go numb, and proceeding to jerk off with that hand. This will give the feeling of a hand job from someone else. Camus would be proud; perhaps "killing an Arab" should be a jerk off euphemism...
Hello!!? It's Paul Simon!
I think you're absolutely right, Terry.
He is very assymetrical... especially in the eyeball & that-skin-that-divides-your-nostril regions.
funny, the first thing i thought was "woody allen" and the second was "right orbital edema"
This photo make me uncomfortable in that
I-could-be-sucked-up-into-one-of-those-
cavernous-nostrils-at-any-moment-and-be-lost-f
kind of ways.
hey nerd, are you sure it isn't facial droop?
The camera angle is not something that needs to be read into that much. This is what happens when one turns their camera around to adjust the lens and accidentally takes a picture of themselves!
It makes his expression so much funnier, too.
It's Woody Allen.
What a coincidence. I just got done reading the Stranger again last week. I'm reading Camus' The Plague now.
Maybe this is SALT? It kinda fits... intellectual, nihilistic, mysterious... and in a Woody Allen disguise (no caps!) to throw off his detractors.
Some of y'all get creeped out by every single find! You must have very sensitive constitutions. Do you leave the lights on at night to fall asleep?
This man is obviously some sort of visionary!
He took the world's first Myspace profile picture, decades before it was invented!
goosebumps
I like this find. The description that the finder provided makes it even more interesting.
Dear Mom,
Remember when I shot Kayla and you took a picture of me just before I ran out of the house and moved to France, and then you mailed it to me just to make me feel bad. Remember that. Yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot.
Well, anyway, I lost it. I think I was using it as a bookmark or something. So I just thought I'd let you know. I don't regret it. The shooting that is. But I'm sorry I lost the picture. It reminded me of those good times playing monopoly.
I have some friends now. We play all the time. Sometimes I have to straighten them out when they don't let me buy Marvin Gardens, but mostly we all just try to get along.
Your loving son
Holy Nostrils Batman!
I think he is everyone's strange uncle - the guy that "lightheartedly" slaps his nieces on the ass and then hogs all of the banana cream pie after dinner. His name is probably something like Bobo Schminkfiner. Maybe he's really nice, though. What ever happened to benefit of the doubt?
I agree - I love how you included the wheres and hows of you finding the find... Camus!? Fantastic. I, too, hope he left it with his French girlfriend!
I think that he's actually corpse...the droopy eyelid caused by a blow to the head...the photo, taken as part of the investigation, was stolen from the evidence file by the perp who was actually a homicide detective turned predator after being twisted by the injustice of the job.
This man has "Geeky" written all over him.
Those nostrils are out of control.
Reminds me of "Meathead" from All In The Family.
turbo; this photo is a bit too dated to be of either Gene or Dean, but perhaps maybe an older stepbrother? LOL
i love WEEN.
Way to tie in yesterday's find, 'Hey Look!'
oops, that was meant for 'The shooters in the hall', but you're cool too 'Hey Look!'
spot on, nadine! i agree 100%. i'm in the minority that doesn't find this creepy. i think it's just some guy mugging hilariously for the camera, and i think the finder was being sarcastic about the "clearly an intellectual" bit. goodness! some of you are so tightly wound!
You might be correct, Lovers. This could be the lost older step brother of Gene and Dean Ween. Let's call him Steve.
he looks like a young Allen Ginsberg. before the beard
I don't see why everyone thinks this guy is such a creepso.
I see him as the dorky bestfriend always carrying his camera around. He's cool, witty, and never stays in one place.
It maybe cliche
But it sounds right to me.
I don't see why everyone thinks this guy is such a creepso.
I see him as the dorky bestfriend always carrying his camera around. He's cool, witty, and never stays in one place.
It maybe cliche
But it sounds right to me.
Alice in Wonderland, I completely agree.
Does anyone else think that this is possibly the most beautiful boy you have ever seen? Intellectual (glasses), funny (pose) and sweet (smile). His eyes- though one is closed seems to look into the viewer. It's difficult to explain, but I hope you understand. Finally, who else loves those glasses? *raises hand*
looks Spanish to me
Learn something new every day! Today I learned what a "stranger" is, and somebody at work told me what"tossing a salad" is. Two new things I learned.
"I think the photo was left with his French girlfriend as a souvenir of warm summer evenings on the Cote d'Azur speaking the language of love."
duuuuumb! it was a cool find until i read that last sentence.
Agreed, Alice and hipster. Anyone who rocks the Elvis Costello specs is cool with me.
Dear Nothing - also look up ATM, bukkake, goatse, hell - just go to CJ and you will learn things that will make you weep. I check it everyday BEFORE I check Found.
Terry's description is wonderful! Perhaps even more than usual, everyone's comments today say so much more about the commenters than the find. Whether you see Jame Gumb or Yves Montand depends on your relationship to the world and to romance. While Turbo made me laugh (as always), I'll go with Terry today. Merci, mon ami!
Well said, Crisis.
Hey! Where's Clover? She always has a sweet take on all things French....
I thought of Woody Allen, too. What does that say about my relationship to the world and to romance? That I'm a dorky geek?
I'm waiting for a cockroach to crawl out of his right nostril and scurry down his chin.
Wow, this was found in Nice. Quelle coincidence! I have been away from Found for a couple of days, searching airline tickets to Nice! Hooray! I'm going in March! We depart 6 months from today! Oh là là! I'm gonna look for that used bookstore.
Also, I didn't know anything about Chuck Close, but after comparing this photo to the self portrait (thanks for the link, birch tree in The Walker) I'm wondering if this isn't really him. The hair is identical!
Marla,
the only reason why I went on and on about french currency is because several people before me had asked what a centime was. I just went a little bit further.
I think it's cool that MJ explained what centimes were. That's one of the best things about Found -- learning new stuff!
Marla, shut your eyes, cuz I'm gonna go on and on way longer than MJ on the subject!
For those who are interested, here's more info on the "centime."
MJ is correct; before the Euro, centimes were coins worth 100th of a franc, which equaled about 1/7 of a U.S. penny in 2000 (if my memory serves me correctly.) They were also extremely tiny and tinny; they reminded me of toy money.
When the Euro became the official currency it soon equaled about the same value as the U.S. dollar, so the coin that is worth 100th of the Euro was more like the U.S. penny or cent. It is called a "centime" in France, but apparently in some countries it's called a "cent."
So, how much did that used book cost in American money? In recent years the dollar has been falling in value against the Euro. Summer of 2006 it was worth about $1.19, so the book cost approximately $.60. Yesterday the euro hit $1.40. So, the book that contained this picture would have cost about $.70 if bought yesterday.
After reading the posts yesterday, I began to wonder about the French use of "centime" with Euro currency, so I looked it up. Here's what wikipedia says:
"The term cent/cents ... is official in France and Belgium, but is in competition (mainly in France) with centime/centimes (the French name for one one-hundredth of the former French or Belgian franc), in part to avoid confusion with the word cent, meaning 'hundred'. However, the two words are pronounced differently, and a parallel situation in Canada (the French word for a hundredth of a Canadian dollar is "cent") has long existed without attracting attention. Before its use in relation to the euro, the word 'cent' ... was best known to European Francophones as a hundredth of a dollar (U.S., Canadian, etc.) In France, the word centime, or centime d'euro, is far more common than cent. According to the Académie Française, 'the hundredth of a euro is to be referred to as centime'. French-speaking Belgians use more often cent than centime (because of the Dutch influence)."
More than most people wanted to know, but there it is.
Here's an interesting website, all about the Euro:
http://ec.europa.eu/euro/entry.html
Now, what the heck is "Ween"? and who are Gene and Dean? I'm going to google now...
You've got a great imagination. ;)
Great find.
I doubt such a person, should he stumble upon FOUND and read all these derogatory comments would ever come forward, as the finder hoped might happen.
Do I see a bat in the cave?
I don't think he's creepy. I like it. and I love the detailed story about the find.
It's very Tim Robbins in Jacob's Ladder. That's my first thought. Especially because throughout the movie The Stranger is often seen.
It's Anton Chigurh from the film No Country for Old Men! But he got bifocals! The mystery of how the movie ends is solved: after getting hit by a car and hobbling away, he goes to Lens Crafters to get some hipster frames. Also serves as a great "disguise."
"No one will recognize me now!" Anton thinks to himself. Then, he climbs into his time-machine/makes fictional-characters- into-real-ones machine, goes to Nice,France takes this photo and inserts into the book, then laughs manically as realizes he's gotten away with muuuurrrderrr! BwaHAhAHa!
Amazing find.
I think he's beautiful.
'creepy' you say?? weirdos. he looks like a perfectly nice guy to me. actually, he reminds me of Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords...(if anyone knows who i'm talking about, i'll be happy.)
I know who you're talking about. Yep, definitely a Jemaine-a-like, and that can't possibly be a bad thing. Also looks like Gael Garcia Bernal to me.
Incidentally, the title of Camus' novel is usually translated as 'The Outsider'... I can resist pointing this out because I'm a pedant, but also because it's a better way of summing up the main character.
The Flight of the Conchords do a hilarious song in French! Something like fa-fa fa-fa; it's a video on YouTube.
Kilroy was here -- I mean there.
I agree. It definitely reminded me of Chuck Close's painting. I've been back to the Walker three times just to specifically see that painting. It's influenced some of my own work.
Nevertheless, I find the photograph endearing.
We all know if that guy had a myspace, he'd have 58 picture comments on this photo..or rather 102.
Don't you guys recognize "old blue eyes"?!
One blew east,and one blew west